Herd/Proletariat

I hope you mean Bonapartism not Bonerpartism.

Or boner partyism (= Italian left communism).

I like that: "Boner Partyism" - the fetishism of electoral politics!

The 'herd,' in Marxist terms, would be the class-collaborationist totality of capitalist society, or all members of it taken as abstract beings irrespective of their class. This illusion did in fact hold both in money and politics, between which there was often overlap. Nietzsche, of course, would generally not tolerate an individual making substantial changes in the social order, and in that sense is merely an inert siphon on Marx's categories of concrete individuality, and in general a notable drop in the quality of German philosophy such that you suspect that the Nazis could not have invented a better person to stir up hatred against where Germany had gone, if only they had portrayed things in such a way. Of course, the German Social Democracy did a similarly impressive job in that. Nietzsche was, of course, a populariser, and as such their ranting about the 'herd' should be taken with some hesitance.

Marx, of course, was against the overall system of social relations prevalent at the time, on some level. Nietzsche was merely an attempt to somehow assert the abstract man of this society against this society, and hence took on a similar popular and generally pandering style to please the many. Nietzsche's political and social thought hardly went beyond the basics of bourgeois politics, such as the abstract man with negative freedoms, and the obligation of producers to all such people regardless of their actual class or otherwise, Nietzsche was unsure about whether by their herd - and what did the bourgeoisie care about more than the herd, and indeed people's belonging happily in their social system? - they meant to criticise capitalism, which subjugated people to their society in the congealed form of money and capital, or socialism, and because of course they had no problem with selling German philosophy by the pound they were increasingly determined in the direction of blaming socialism for - nothing in particular.

If such as Nietzsche felt oppressed by communist society already, this would at least have gone towards confirming certain Marxist positing about the historical process. However, while Kierkegaard at least came into conflict with the social system, and hence in some ways anticipated or went beyond Marx, and certainly at the least would be some distance from supporting a society structured around the uninhibited hedonism that is monetary accumulation and which panders to every instinct and expects each producer to do so, hence forming in a way a part of the same moment, Nietzsche was very much a descent from both and far more a part of the society, having more similarities with its pseudo-pessimistic strain of the 20th and early 21st Century. As you note, Nietzsche, unlike both of these, attempts to merely restrain philosophy to a change of mind, while otherwise wanting to let people do whatever they are already doing for no reason, or being apologetic, and in this sense is a retreat from a tradition which from the beginning has sought to link thought to a form of existence, which was therefore implicitly opposed to the alienation of human production or domination of unthinking, irrational objects over thinking humans under capital.

Or boner partyism (= Italian left communism).

Boner partyism the sworn nemesis of manarchists.

The Pigeon #7

‘…and pinch the people’s bottoms…’

Perhaps a dog and a stick would help?

When Cows Come Home

The ranch-bound bovines, in dehydration,
yet wary of Kool-aid, declined to drink.
They grazed in wonder, cowed rumination:
where does “beef” come from? A herd tends to think

of pasturage, water, and basic needs.
Ranch-hands assured them all was in order;
privileged guests enjoy the finest feeds.
Cows, content on this side of the border

try Buddhism, yoga – or simply gaze…
though things in the distance loomed ominous
(those lots at the edge of the well-hoofed ways)
– and a stench wafted into their consciousness.

Yet calves frolicked on while the bulls mounted heifers –
dreamed vegan dreams as they nibbled grasses
some earned doctorates, others went clubbing;
all loosed sustainable methane gases.

Soothing their calves with fables and stories
where cows are the measure of pastured life
they deflected the gist of the young ones’ queries,
affirming that Truth means avoidance of strife.

“It’s best to just graze. Don’t ask questions dear.
We’re on this planet without any clue.
We evolved. From just what is a little unclear –
but Cow Science has proved that it’s true.”

Connect Hook

Personally I think this would be a lovely first poem on a thread about anarchist/working class poetry. Just a thought :-)

Auld-bod

The Pigeon #7

‘…and pinch the people’s bottoms…’

Perhaps a dog and a stick would help?

When Cows Come Home

The ranch-bound bovines, in dehydration,
yet wary of Kool-aid, declined to drink.
They grazed in wonder, cowed rumination:
where does “beef” come from? A herd tends to think

of pasturage, water, and basic needs.
Ranch-hands assured them all was in order;
privileged guests enjoy the finest feeds.
Cows, content on this side of the border

try Buddhism, yoga – or simply gaze…
though things in the distance loomed ominous
(those lots at the edge of the well-hoofed ways)
– and a stench wafted into their consciousness.

Yet calves frolicked on while the bulls mounted heifers –
dreamed vegan dreams as they nibbled grasses
some earned doctorates, others went clubbing;
all loosed sustainable methane gases.

Soothing their calves with fables and stories
where cows are the measure of pastured life
they deflected the gist of the young ones’ queries,
affirming that Truth means avoidance of strife.

“It’s best to just graze. Don’t ask questions dear.
We’re on this planet without any clue.
We evolved. From just what is a little unclear –
but Cow Science has proved that it’s true.”

Connect Hook

a historical animal, and when their production is alienated, the individual themself becomes alienated from their species being, because they are not engaged in any substantial activity which can be experienced as universal.

Marx generally uses it to refer to the fact that a human being does not merely act in particular, or abstracted from others, but their activity necessarily deals with universal categories and hence as it were 'casts judgement' upon others. In their activity, they necessarily encounter the 'social question,' or questions of social organisation or how the others should be organised, and capitalism attempts to estrange them from this and place this in the hands of impersonal forces. Their own action, therefore, implicitly or explicitly involves interacting with or changing this social mode of existence, and hence capital tended to be insistent upon 'humility' or such things - which in truth mean nothing, and care nothing for truth - so that people would hold this social form on a pedestal and praise it even if it seems otherwise blatantly irrational.

When I was sensually brooding over the fact that my species, my neighbors, are so lagging in the consciousness that I have (one open to communism and superseding conventional forms) I had to admit that I was still part of a species, which means that no matter how alien they are to me we are essentially the same...

While capital did allow such abstractions to thrive, Marx's theory isn't to be confused for later 'philosophers,' who mostly ruminated about their feelings. Marx was concerned with objectively describing the social nexus, which a human being comes into relation to in action, and in a communist's case negatively. While capitalism, for instance in electoral fetishism, promoted the myth of abstract humanity, and our unity and similarity on this basis, Marx of course was concerned about the particular differentiation in a given society between proletariat, petit-bourgeois, bourgeoisie, etc., and further than this the difference between communism and capitalism as manifested in a given society. Capitalists, for instance, with little regard for their 'fundamental humanity,' emptied themselves quite easily in favour of being a functionary of capital, and hence capital was a significant part of their life-force or what kept them going and drove their actions, irrespective of abstractions which would claim to do so but could in this case do nothing. Obviously, the idea that one can look deeper than a human's consciousness to merely their being an abstraction, the 'human,' when in reality obviously the human being must think and not merely be an abstraction, is fairly misleading, and in reality a human's consciousness and concrete social relation are deeper than the merely shallow category of their being or not being a human.

Of course, Marx did hold that 'human' history had not yet begun anyway, and in that sense was unlikely to throw around the word haphazardly at the time.

I had trouble following your post.

That's alright, people have trouble following everything. Even Lenin sometimes found it hard to follow Marxism, probably the 'words like bats' and that.

It's interesting that Nietzsche chose "herd" as his word, because to me that conjures the feeling of species... but so long as there is a herd where herd mentality reigns, then the species being will always be conditioned by capitalism.

This could be misleading. Obviously, a 'herd mentality,' being merely conformist, is not something that can determine anything. A herd mentality does not actually reign, while of course the mentality of the producer (and those who may influence them) may or may not 'reign' over their products, it is rather mostly insubstantial.

But there can still be a "herd" when we associate as many individuals in a generalized radical collective, as a countercultural force growing within society.

This is vague, but there is of course no such 'herd' to be condoned. Such a herd would merely have relapsed into capitalism, which was the predominant society or mode of social relation, and as such there was not really such a thing likely in a communistic context except as a result of co-optation or some parts being closer integrated into the existing society and identifying with it more. A social form mediated by social withdrawal and opposition to it is of course not something that can be summarised by the term 'herd.'

Any connections from there would have to be from a withdrawn and hence not herd basis, and hence individual connections rather than just generic ones. You would expect such relations and friendships to be deeper than ones outside of this, and more lasting ultimately, because they are going in the same direction in this aspect and not one running towards a society, and the other away, which could make relations strained.

I take the position that a core idea of Nietzsche was taken (directly or indirectly) from that of Stirner.

Stirner was the first modern surely to directly attack all moralities per se from an egotistical perspective; and he was received as that, an outrageous bête noir.

Thus he asked what was wrong with having recreational sex with your mother.

Although there was a whole set of cross pollinating German ideas swirling around then.

So I think Stirner as a nominal ‘union of egotists communist’; is a better place to start.

I really don’t wish to blather on too much before addressing the core Nietzsche/Stirner thing.

But Stirner's position itself didn't appear out of vacuum, it was an intellectual response to the Fuerbachian position, shared by Marx before 1845.

Marx’s Fuerbachian position before 1845 was.

That human beings, or their essence of their nature, or human nature or instinct was naturally communistic etc etc.

And that was an objective material reality etc.

And that ‘private property’ social ‘environments’ were alien or ‘estranging’ to human instincts/essence just as much as a zoo is alien to a polar bear and a cage to a bird.

So there was then, in 1844, for them a communistic ‘goal’ which was to recreate a ‘natural’ communistic social environment compatible with our ‘material’ human essence.

Think maybe; a return to primitive communism with all the technology [‘wealth of previous development’] accrued after the casting out of the ‘Garden of Eden’ and descent into the ultimate private property hell of capitalism etc etc.

Anyway you can pick out for yourselves the general idea from Karl’s own poetic philosophical blather.

In both forms communism already is aware of being reintegration or return of man to himself,……………….

(3) Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm

This is the point at which it starts to get a bit complicated and involved.

Stirner thought this communistic human essence thing was false wishful thinking and invention without any scientific or material basis etc.

But that was besides Stirner’s main point really.

Which was that it was thinly disguised pseudo Christian morality about altruism, compassion, caring for others as the new revised “way, truth and the life” in order to return to our natural, albeit not god given, state of ‘bliss’.

And as Stirner put it; whereas under christianity sinners, or egotists, would go to hell.

Now under this new ‘materialist ideology’ egotists were going to be ‘demonised’ and shamed as un-human, or at the very least as corrupted and in need of another kind of ‘salvation’ that prayer wasn't going to provide.

(An analogy might be with homosexuality; for christians it is a sin, with the early 20th century ‘materialist orientated’ psychoanalysts it was a mental illness- that was even the official position adopted by the Bolsheviks in the early 1920’s. )

It wasn’t just a case of Stirner reading too much into it in making the ‘connection’.

As far as Fuerbach was concerned early christianity, or the essence of it, was a metaphysical expression [projection] of this self same communistic social instinct etc.

The following is Fred’s first response after reading Stirner;

Letters of Marx and Engels 1844 Letter from Engels to Marx in Paris

In the second place he must be told that in its egoism the human heart is of itself, from the very outset, unselfish and self-sacrificing,

[..still just clinging on at this point to human essence thing and their erstwhile philosophical conscience……..]

so that he finally ends up with what he is combating. These few platitudes will suffice to refute the one-sidedness. But we must also adopt such truth as there is in the principle.

And it is certainly true that we must first make a cause our own, egoistic cause, before we can do anything to further it – and hence that in this sense, irrespective of any eventual material aspirations, we are communists out of egoism also, and it is out of egoism that we wish to be human beings, not mere individuals.

Or to put it another way. Stirner is right in rejecting Feuerbach's ‘man’, or at least the ‘man’ of Das Wesen des Christentums. Feuerbach deduces his ‘man’ from God, it is from God that he arrives at ‘man’, and hence ‘man’ is crowned with a theological halo of abstraction. The true way to arrive at ‘man’ is the other way about. We must take our departure from the Ego, the empirical, flesh-and-blood individual, if we are not, like Stirner, to remain stuck at this point but rather proceed to raise ourselves to ‘man’. ‘man’ will always remain a wraith so long as his basis is not empirical man. In short we must take our departure from empiricism and materialism if our concepts, and notably our ‘man’, are to be something real; we must deduce the general from the particular, not from itself or, à la Hegel, from thin air. …blah blah

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/letters/44_11_19.htm

But in the end it was a matter of egotism or social instinct as irreconcilable opposites.

They quickly ditched social instinct theory as having no scientific legs, and went for egotism as the predicate which became standard Marxist mantra for the next 25 years.

Then came the miss represented Darwin, hardly a communist or someone who would be inclined to indulge in the Fuerbachian idea of Christianity being an artefact and human essence making god in its own image etc.

EG

For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them. The services may be of a definite and evidently instinctive nature; or there may be only a wish and readiness, as with most of the higher social animals, to aid their fellows in certain general ways. But these feelings and services are by no means extended to all the individuals of the same species, only to those of the same association. Secondly, as soon as the mental faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of each individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably results, as we shall hereafter see, from any unsatisfied instinct, would arise, as often as it……………

http://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/published/1871_Descent_F937/1871_Descent_F937.1.html

Fred picked it up thus.

(6) On the other hand I cannot agree with you that the war of every man against every man was the first phase of human development. In my opinion the social instinct was one of the most essential levers in the development of man from the ape. The first men must have lived gregariously and so far back as we can see we find that this was the case.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_11_12.htm

That in its turn was at least a counter argument to Stirner’s 1844 critique of Feuerbach’s, then, materially unsubstantiated human essence position.

And they could then at least revisit early christian communism; if for no better reason to embarrass modern ‘christian revisionists’.

And after Freds

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/index.htm

And Kautsky’s

https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/index.htm

Many of them then piled in eg Rosa.

I think Nietzsche mixed Darwin into the 'first' modern anti moralist [Stirner]; in that egotistical competition and survival of the fittest etc was ‘inevitably’ the driving force for progress (of all kinds) .

With the potential for it end up, perhaps cerebrally, in a kind of excellence or perfect (human) condition which may be ‘different’ to how it got there.

A bit like “What have the Romans ever done for us”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso

Although for Nietzsche it was very much the Greeks (never mind the slavery and imperialism etc) and all the fantastic, more intellectual, stuff they gave us.

There is perhaps an analogous argument in Marxist theory as regards letting capitalism rip and not standing in its way or development as it will lead eventually to communism.

On the Herd thing it depends on how you want to look at it.

You could argue that it is conservative socially conditioned ‘habit’ holding back the progression of ideas etc which should be allowed to sort themselves out in a free competition.

Or that it is, as in the animal kingdom, an expression of a kind of cohesive social instinct.

That can be manipulated in human society by those with the power to define the parameters for ‘normative’ society.

THE ANTICHRIST

by Friedrich Nietzsche
Published 1895

57

Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists, the apostles to the Chandala, who undermine the workingman’s instincts, his pleasure, his feeling of contentment with his petty existence— who make him envious and each him revenge.... Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of “equal” rights.... What is bad? But I have already answered: all that proceeds from weakness, from envy, from revenge.— The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry....

58.

………... There is a perfect likeness between Christian and anarchist: their object, their instinct, points only toward destruction……….The Christian and the anarchist: both are decadents; both are incapable of any act that is not disintegrating, poisonous, degenerating, blood-sucking; both have an instinct of mortal hatred of everything that stands up, and is great, and has durability, and promises life a future.... Christianity was the vampire of the imperium Romanum,— overnight it destroyed the vast chievement of the Romans: the conquest of the soil for a great culture…

Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil

259.

To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organization).

[prob a reference to Lycurgus/Spartan 'communism- he liked them}

As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF SOCIETY, it would immediately disclose what it really is--namely, a Will to the DENIAL of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;--but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped?..............

……..On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter, people now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of society in which "the exploiting character" is to be absent--that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions. "Exploitation" does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function, it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life--Granting that as a theory this is a novelty--as a reality it is the FUNDAMENTAL FACT of all history let us be so far honest towards ourselves!

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/nietzsche/1886/beyond-good-evil/ch09.htm

Dave B

Anyway you can pick out for yourselves the general idea from Karl’s own poetic philosophical blather.

(3) Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development.

Generally speaking, none of this is particularly divergent from Marx's later characterisation of capital as alienation, and communism as a realisation of the nature of human activity and production.

Which was that it was thinly disguised pseudo Christian morality about altruism, compassion, caring for others as the new revised “way, truth and the life” in order to return to our natural, albeit not god given, state of ‘bliss’.

Firstly, that's not exactly 'Christian,' it's secular. Christianity was characterised biblically as being not about 'peace,' but a 'sword,' in which characterisation 'Saint Max' was a very poor parody of this. Secondly, Marx always held that capital and participation in it was a departure from the nature of human activity, and hence has little relevance to this. They had critiqued as the 'first stage of communism' a sort of artificial collectivism, anyway. So in that sense Stirner was just an inferior version of things that they devoted about five minutes to.

Now under this new ‘materialist ideology’ egotists were going to be ‘demonised’ and shamed as un-human, or at the very least as corrupted and in need of another kind of ‘salvation’ that prayer wasn't going to provide.

Egotists were not a relevant category in the early Marx, mostly.

(An analogy might be with homosexuality; for christians it is a sin, with the early 20th century ‘materialist orientated’ psychoanalysts it was a mental illness- that was even the official position adopted by the Bolsheviks in the early 1920’s. )

Historically the early communists were generally against homosexuality, yes. It wasn't really until the 'modern,' liberal left that people begun to consider such things as incompatible with communism - along with generally trying to 'revise' or 'update' these earlier communists, generally with little or 'bad' fruit as it were.

As far as Fuerbach [sic.] was concerned early christianity, or the essence of it, was a metaphysical expression [projection] of this self same communistic social instinct etc.

Marx did continue to hold that religion was an expression of society as an abstraction held apart from human beings. So, again, there was little place for Stirner, and in any case asserting 'egotism' was commonplace in a capitalist system and hardly required his active 'influence,' however much they might have tried to agree.

Engels

In the second place he must be told that in its egoism the human heart is of itself, from the very outset, unselfish and self-sacrificing,

That egotism and altruism are not in actuality opposed denominations was, of course, not something that they would diverge from.

But in the end it was a matter of egotism or social instinct as irreconcilable opposites.

They quickly ditched social instinct theory as having no scientific legs, and went for egotism as the predicate which became standard Marxist mantra for the next 25 years.

They didn't generally discuss science in much elaboration until later, where Marx for instance favoured the oft-neglected Trémaux. Generally speaking, it is accepted that Engels and Marx may critique Darwin, but Marx's liking Trémaux dismissed as farcical with hardly a second glance, which is fairly inconsistent.

They also never accepted egotism and 'social instinct' as irreconcilable opposites, or identified the proletariat or bourgeoisie with one or the other. Obviously, they stood against the 'egotism' of atomised bourgeois society, which would leave everyone else be - Kierkegaard also stood against this, notably -, as also its 'social instinct,' which was merely an attempt at reconciling things. In that sense, they dismissed, as indeed occurred, Stirner's writing as merely an unnecessary melodrama, and in this sense could hardly have been directly motivated by its categories, abstractions as they were. Stirner mostly took a couple of categories and then ripped off communists to give it a sense of structure. Their opposition to 'human essence' theories, which was often unfounded anyway - in this connection, human beings exist and need not be observed through a microscope, so a blatantly 'scientific' approach in response would have come across as farcical - , was mostly that they could not explain the divergence from this into modern society, except for making noises about it, and that phrasing this slightly differently this 'human essence' was not observed realised (this is misleading, humans could hardly realise anything else) and hence had little relation to the people themselves, or indeed the humans of the time.

Because it was so abstracted from themselves, and became an external 'human essence' that was to be revered, which despite its cognition could not be realised, it was therefore in essence religious. Stirner, of course, begin by concocting such creatures. In that sense, their progression was quite consistent with the earlier critique of Hegel and religion, for instance, rather than taking any significant influence from Stirner apart from partial agreement. Viewing Stirner as a significant divergence - or indeed his category of 'egotism' as a significant divergence from anything - would require identifying their earlier viewpoints with an abstract, harmonious take on Feuerbach, which was not the case, or their later viewpoints, for instance in the introduction to the Grundrisse or account of production in Das Kapital, or similar things earlier on, as not drawing on ideas of the essential nature of human production and activity, when of course such things were in continuity with their earlier texts.

In general, Marx did not hold in any abstraction to 'social instinct' theory as opposed to anything else, earlier on, which would have required any absolute 'influence' or such. They held, as later on, that communism was inevitable due to the contradictions of a capitalist, atomised and hence tolerant society, and the proletariat were identified as partial bearers of this, who would be so forced to take on a historical role, apparently, because of this historical movement towards communism - or in brief the contradictory nature of capital, which produced the proletariat as such because of this - where they would not exist. Generally speaking, almost every work that Marx and Engels praised (other than Trémaux) is cited as a source of influence, which could be misleading. If such influence was derived, it might have implied some form of respect, in lieu of which such people were generally met with mockery and not taken particularly seriously in their claims. Generally speaking, people going on under the influence of somebody while fervently mocking them might come across as comical, but in general Marx and Engels were immunised from this and turned their barbs of humour towards the others.

In general, giving Stirner credit for the beginning thesis and theoretical framework of the German Ideology is perhaps giving him far too much credit, especially for a work that culminates so far as he is concerned with a fairly unswavering critique. It is essentially portraying Marxism as a paraphrase of Stirner, which is highly misleading, given how Stirner tended to write.

And they could then at least revisit early christian communism; if for no better reason to embarrass modern ‘christian revisionists’.

Engels mostly relied on Bruno Bauer there, despite generally disagreeing with him on everything. In this he was akin to Hegel, who after making categories was quite willing to pimp them out to any received wisdom in a field, and hence as an author was often hardly 'philosophical' and more just an assorted authorship on different subjects. He would have no doubt given an account of prostitution derived uncritically from the common trends among prostitutes at the time as well, if he had decided to consider the subject.

Generally, though, the later Engels did have a certain interest in religions, etc., which was rare in 'Marxism' previously and generally made it seem more like a general theory. Marx also wrote a bit about the relevance of dialectics to calculus.

Although for Nietzsche it was very much the Greeks (never mind the slavery and imperialism etc) and all the fantastic, more intellectual, stuff they gave us.

Nietzsche was very quick to condemn certain Greeks, like Socrates, presumably for trying to have some idea of what they were doing. Notwithstanding which Socrates stands in relation to Nietzsche as they stand in relation to most contemporary filosofes, namely it's pretty much all in their favour.

This is spreading out a bit.

I am a self described Marxist who, I am frequently told, takes a highly unorthodox position on human nature and morality etc.

My working position is similar I believe to the one taken by Fuerbach and Karl before 1845 and similar to that of Pannoekoek, Kropotkin and for that matter Darwin.

That is we evolved co-operative social instincts as social animals and they are thus innate and inherent albeit perhaps latent repressed or perverted.

And that they can express themselves or be felt as compassion, empathy, ‘morality and justice etc after passing through the modifying filter of ‘rational thought’ which is inevitably an ‘aggregate’ of social relations or culturally acquired social precepts or whatever.

I am focusing on a particular category or sub set of human nature (ie co-operative
) and I am not interested in conflating it with other potential aspects of behavioural human nature eg the desire for food, sex, shelter clothing, the need to engage in purposeful creative labour etc etc.

Nor I am interested in conflating it with other superficial moralities which are clearly not cross cultural or for that matter trans historical and which no-one would pretend are instinctive.

Nor do, I like, Fuerbach classify not eating weasels because they practice oral sex as part of the essence of communist Christianity.

Even though it was part of the openly communist epistle of Barnabas circa 135AD, he probably picked that up from Ovid of all people.

In fact it is probably better to just refer to it as far as I am concerned as the communist instinct.

Whether you believe it exists or not.

So in 1845 I say Karl, in critiquing Feuerbach, to whom a year earlier he had written a letter saying that he ‘loved’ him, reverses his position.

Theses On Feuerbach

VI
Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence.

Fuerbach had separated out the essential ‘communist parts’ of the new testament from all the fanny (historical and cultural ensemble of social relations - Fuerbach knew what that kind of stuff was and was not ignorant of people like David Strauss etc)

So I am not leaving out essemblies of social aggregates or prevailing ideologies or cultures etc.

Back to Karl.

He says NO!

But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual.

By which he means like where does it come from, what is its cause or just why.

is consequently compelled:

To abstract from the historical process

To not look for other social causes

and to fix the religious sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose an abstract – isolated – human individual.

Essence, therefore, can be comprehended only as “genus”, as an internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals.

Or in other words in modern terminology genetically hardwired.

It is really important I think to re-locate yourself in the limited pre Darwinian historical epoch in which these were being discussed

VII
Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that the “religious sentiment” is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual whom he analyses [people with religious communistic looking ‘sentiments] belongs to a particular form of society [which is the cause of it]

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm

I think the main point here is that Karl rejects the communistic instinct and unselfish human heart theory that they held 12 months earlier.

Actually I think Fuerbach was correct for the wrong reasons and that there was a strong social product or social environment element in the expression of early Christian communism.

[There was much historical information on early Christian communism that they did not seem to draw upon or be aware off.

There was the epistle of Barnabas, internally and un-controversially dated at circa 135AD; extremely well provenanced or referred to in other multiple 2nd century ancillary material with an actual extant physical 4th century copy in codex sinaticus.

In other word it had been included as part of the new testament cannon.

Didache which is though to be 2nd century of before.

And the anti Christian documents by Celsus and the Passing of Peregrinus.

There even appears to be a cross over with Didache and Passing of Peregrinus.

Didache addresses the problem of freeloaders latching onto their communistic economic communes and Passing of Peregrinus scoffs at the Christian suckers for falling for that kind of thing.]

Before 6AD Judea etc still operated under Judiac Law which actually had liberal attitudes as regards debt forgiveness and land foreclosure etc etc.

Afterwards it came under Roman financial law and the cash nexus of the taxation system.

Stupid peasants got into cash flow problems whilst clever peasants saved money to pay taxes and held onto crops until prices went up.

One borrowed pay day loan money to other and foreclosed on their land when they couldn’t afford the interest and then employed them as agricultural labourers on the land the used to own themselves.

It was a variation of the English land enclosure thing; dispossession of simple commodity producers from their means of production catapulting them into the sphere of wage labourers.

Something very similar to the Judea thing happened with ‘small roman peasants’ as briefly covered by Karl in volume III,

Lenin did something on it re Russia and I think it crops up Russian literature eg The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky.

I think Karl in volume III also talks about small peasants ‘extending their working day’ to produce a surplus over and above what they need, surplus product, converted into surplus value in its obvious form, money.

To be loaned to lazy peasnants at interest.

As one genesis of capitalism.

Some of the first industrial capitalists in Russia (textile production in the 1850’s mainly) were legalistically serfs which produced all sorts of institutionalised absurdities at the time before rich slaves/serfs could buy their freedom as they could in Roman empire and in the Southern states.

Actually this historical economic situation is reflected in the gospel documents themselves re the repeated appearance of the term ‘wages’ and people hanging about to hire themselves out to employers in the narrative.

And the should we pay taxes to the Romans thing which was an obvious political set up.

So I suppose if you go back to formal Marxism, with communist ideology emerging in a metaphysical form (which was normative at the time) out of the social relations of the dispossessed and agricultural (the principal economy) wage workers.

We are sort of back onto firmer ground?

There is a bit of a historical problem with ‘wages’ as the term has been historically used to cover the sale price of simple commodity producers and artisans by both the artisans themselves and the buyers of their product.

That persisted into early 19th century in England even.

Celsus writing it is assumed around 175AD ridicules and disparages Christianity as being exclusively made of the ignoble and thus stupid and uneducated lower orders, formal slaves and women, to add a bit of misogynistic ‘emphasis’.

But his socio economic analysis of the economic base of the early Christianity also provides us with some information as to its artisan crypto slave base as well.

In keeping with views of the time eg Cicero;

"vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery."

Celsus doesn’t omit the embarrassing fact that according to his well informed sources Jesus himself was a carpenter and his mother was a weaver of cloth whilst moonlighting as a hooker serving the local roman garrison.

It never seemed to occur to these first anti Christians to plug the line that he never existed.

I think we know that these petty bourgeois simple commodity producers who are ripped off and squeezed by non producing parasitic sharks in the form of the state, landowners and merchant capitalist class can orientate themselves in reaction or Nietzsche like ‘ressentiment’ (mindless spite and bitterness eg Bones ‘class war’) towards those that consume but do not produce.

I hate this magic word ‘abstract’, can we avoid it?